The build One-off
The work that makes it yours
Blocks cover the groundwork. What makes your product distinct is designed and built for you, scoped per project and priced on its own.
Forge pricing
What a Forge project costs
Two things get priced: building your product, and running it. No fixed packages, and no platform fee for what you never touch.
- One-off Building it The work that makes the product yours, scoped per project.
- Ongoing Running it The blocks it needs and the usage it generates, month by month.
How it works
Four things make up the cost
They sit on the same bill at the same time. One is paid once, two keep running, and the fourth pulls the total back down.
The blocks Ongoing
We switch on what it needs
Every capability is priced on its own, so a product that never touches commerce or AI never carries their cost.
The usage Ongoing
What you consume scales with you
A handful of measured dimensions move with real use, so a quiet month costs less than a busy one.
The credits Deducted
Shared work is credited back
Where your product reuses something we already run, that lands as a credit instead of a full line. This is what keeps Forge cheaper than building alone.
Complexity bands
How a block gets priced
No block is priced by hand. Each is measured on scope, depth and footprint, and that lands it in a band. The band sets the cost category, not the individual numbers.
So two blocks that look different on paper can share a band: small differences move the bars, not the category.
A small, focused block: a handful of screens, straightforward logic, few connections.
Scope
Depth
Footprint
Running cost
Small differences in scope, depth or footprint move the bars without moving the band.
What counts as usage
The dimensions we measure
These are the only things that move your cost up or down. Nothing is measured that you cannot see.
- Production environments How many live instances it runs.
- Staging environments Optional, and only while needed.
- Development environments Where changes are tried first.
- Data storage What your product actually keeps.
- AI usage Metered per use, visible per feature.
- Team seats The people who administer it.
- End-user accounts Your customers, where there are any.
- Extra languages Beyond the ones you launch with.
What moves the price
Cost follows complexity, not a price list
Two products with the same feature list can land far apart. Here is what actually moves it, and how hard each one pulls.
- Grows gently How much you build Twice the software is nowhere near twice the price. Volume counts, but it flattens as it grows.
- Grows in step How many screens and modules Each separate part is designed, built and kept working, so these add up one for one.
- Grows in step How many systems it talks to Every connected service brings its own contract, edge cases and upkeep.
- Compounds How predictable those systems are One volatile API can cost more than several stable ones: it drags in monitoring and recovery work too.
- Grows in step Who uses it Staff and partners with roles and permissions weigh heavier than anonymous visitors doing one thing.
- Compounds How much load it carries Heavier use means more environments running, and heavier environments to run them on.
- Grows gently How long it must keep running Upkeep grows with the system, but slower than the system itself. It never drops to zero either.
- Grows in step How sensitive the data is Roles, audit trails, payments and personal data: the one place we deliberately give no volume discount.
- Brings it down How much is already shared Reuse is the one factor pulling the other way. It is real, and it is capped, so we never pretend it makes things free.
Transparency
Costs you can follow
No hidden line items, and a way to sanity-check the size before we even talk.
What always holds
- No charge for blocks your product does not run on.
- One overview that shows where the cost comes from.
- Drop something and it stops costing you.
What the estimator tells you
- An indicative size
- How long that usually takes
- A starting point for the first call
- A price or a quote
- Your running cost on Forge
Get a figure for your project
In one conversation we go through what you want to build: which blocks switch on straight away, what genuinely needs custom work, and how heavy it runs. After that you know what the build costs and what it costs per month.
Let's talk